Last Thursday afternoon we shot 13 scenes in about 4 hours for a fictitious movie trailer to learn about the process of shooting. To my surprise everybody had lots of fun and apart from a number of mistakes the material turned out to be quite ok.

A number of beginner's mistakes.

Camera settings. We forgot to check the white balance for the first five shots. The Mini35 was turned off for some takes and even some scenes.

Focus pulling. The focus was off for a number of takes and even some scenes, rendering them unusable. Each scene should be verified on set on a high-res monitor.

Lighting. As there was not much light - especially towards the end of shooting - lights would have been needed. Reflectors only would not have helped much.

Microphone. We should have used a shotgun because there were quite a view wide shots. Also not everything was recorded, we better need to monitor the led display.

Directing. I forgot the "Roll camera, audio" commands. Therefore we missed to record the scene info some times. We should get a clapper board. Further, I forgot the "Cut" command to define the clear end of the take.

Timing. We started too late and almost had no daylight left for the last shots. I need to be more on time.

Number of people. We had seven people there, including two actors, one of them being a 2,5 year old kid. We still were missing one or two.

In short, a good experience. I was cutting on Sunday but I am not finished yet.

This post was posted on November 27, 2006 in the following sections: Fun, Graphics.